The Taft-Hartley Act (1947), or Taft-Hartley Labor Act, was perhaps the single greatest legislative achievement of the 20th century, passed by a RepublicanCongress in override of President Harry Truman's veto. The Taft-Hartley Act single-handedly ended the dire and growing problem of strikes involving millions of workers after World War II, and saved capitalism from the labor unions in the United States. Ever since the Act's passage, Democrats have unsuccessfully attempted to repeal it.

The Act itself was written by the conservative legal scholar Robert Taft, who was then the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate and a three-time presidential candidate. It was sponsored by Taft and also by long time U.S. Representative Fred Hartley.

Opposition and Criticism

Organized labor in the U.S., including the AFL and the CIO, were predictably critical of the act because it significantly weakened labor unions. President Truman called it a "slave labor bill."[1] Critics have argued that the decline of organized labor in the private sector, initially caused by the Taft-Hartley Act and continued later by the anti-union policies of President Ronald Reagan, has been a major contributing factor to increased income inequality in the U.S.[2]